The Incomplete Amorist

"Well?" said Temple.

"Well," said Miss Desmond, dipping her hand in the water—"what a stream this is, to be sure!—Well, your means are satisfactory and you seem to me to have behaved quite beautifully. I don't think I ever heard of such profoundly correct conduct."

"If I've made myself out a prig," said Temple, "I'm sorry. I could tell you lots of things."

"Please spare me! Why are people always so frightfully ashamed of having behaved like decent human beings? I esteem you immensely."

"I'd rather you liked me."

"Well, so I do. But I like lots of people I don't esteem. If I'd married anyone it would probably have been some one like that. But for Betty it's different. I shouldn't have needed to esteem my own husband. But I must esteem hers."

"I'll try not to deserve your esteem more than I'm obliged," said Temple, "but your liking—what can I do to deserve that—?"

"Go on as you've begun, my dear young man, and you'll be Aunt Julia's favourite nephew. No—don't blush. It's an acknowledgement of a tender speech that I always dispense with."

"Advise me," said he, red to the ears and hands. "She doesn't care for me, at present. What can I do?"

"What most of us have to do—when we want anything worth wanting. Wait. We're going home the day after to-morrow. If you turn up at Long Barton about the middle of September—you might come down for the Harvest Festival; it's the yearly excitement. That's what I should do."

"Must I wait so long as that?" he asked. "Why?"

"Let me whisper in your ear," said Miss Desmond, loud above the chatter of the weir. "Long Barton is very dull! Now let's go back."

"I don't want her to accept me because she's bored."

"No more do I. But one sees the proportions of things better when one's dull. And—yes. I esteem you; I like you. You are ingenuous, and innocuous.—No, really that was a yielding to the devil of alliteration. I mean you are a real good sort. The other man has the harmlessness of the serpent. As for me, I have the wisdom of the dove. You profit by it and come to Long Barton in September."

"It seems like a plot to catch her," said Temple.

"A friend of yours told me you were straight. And you are. I thought perhaps she flattered you."

"Who?—No, I'm not to ask questions."

"Lady St. Craye."

"Do you know," he said, slowly pulling downstream, "there's one thing I didn't tell you. I came away from Paris because I wasn't quite sure that I wasn't in love with her."

"Not you," said Miss Desmond. "She'd never have suited you. And now she'll throw herself away on the man with the green eyes and the past. I mean Pasts. And it's a pity. She's a woman after my own heart."

"She's extraordinarily charming," said Temple with a very small sigh.

"Yes extraordinarily, as you say. And so you came away from Paris! I begin to think you have a little of the wisdom of the dove too. Pull now—or we shall be late for breakfast."

He pulled.

"Now that," said the Reverend Cecil that evening to his sister-in-law, "that is the kind of youth I should wish to see my Lizzie select for her help-mate."

"Well," said Miss Desmond, "if you keep that wish strictly to yourself, I should think it had a better chance than most wishes of being gratified."

CHAPTER XXVII

THE PINK SILK STORY

To call on the concierge at Betty's old address, and to ask for news of her had come to seem to Vernon the unbroken habit of a life-time. There never was any news: there never would be any news. But there always might be.

The days went by, days occupied in these fruitless gold-edged enquiries, in the other rose-accompanied enquiries after the health of Lady St. Craye, and in watching for the postman who should bring the answer to his formal proposal of marriage.

To his deep surprise and increasing disquietude, no answer came. Was the Reverend Cecil dead, or merely inabordable? Had Betty despised his offer too deeply to answer it? The lore learned in, as it seemed, another life assured him that a woman never despises an offer too much to say "No" to it.

Watch for the postman. Look at Betty's portrait. Call on the concierge. (He had been used to dislike the employment of dirty instruments.) Call on the florist. (There was a decency in things, even if all one's being were contemptibly parched for the sight of another woman.) Call and enquire for the poor Jasmine Lady. Studio—think of Betty—look at her portrait—pretend to work. Meals at fairly correct intervals. Call on the concierge. Look at the portrait again. Such were the recurrent incidents of Vernon's life. Between the incidents came a padding of futile endeavour. Work, he had always asserted, was the cure for inconvenient emotions. Only now the cure was not available.

And the postman brought nothing interesting, except a letter, post-mark Denver, Col., a letter of tender remonstrance from the Brittany girl, Miss Van Tromp.

Then came the morning when the concierge, demurely assuring him of her devotion to his interests, offered to post a letter. No bribe—and he was shameless in his offers—could wring more than that from her. And even the posting of the letter cost a sum that the woman chuckled over through all the days during which the letter lay in her locked drawer, under Lady St. Craye's bank note and the divers tokens of "ce monsieur's" interest in the intrigue—whatever the intrigue might be—its details were not what interested.

Vernon went home, pulled the table into the middle of the bare studio and wrote. This letter wrote itself without revision.

"Why did you go away?" it said. "Where are you? where can I see you? What has happened? Have your people found out?"

A long pause—the end of the pen bitten.

"I want to have no lies or deceit any more between us. I must tell you the truth. I have never been engaged to anyone. But you would not let me see you without that, so I let you think it. Will you forgive me? Can you? For lying to you? If you can't I shall know that nothing matters at all. But if you can forgive me—then I shall let myself hope for impossible things.

"Dear, whether it's all to end here or not, let me write this once without thinking of anything but you and me. I have written to your father asking his permission to ask you to marry me. To you I want to say that I love you, love you, love you—and I have never loved anyone else. That's part of my punishment for—I don't know what exactly. Playing with fire, I suppose. Dear—can you love me? Ever since I met you at Long Barton" (Pause: what about Miss Van Tromp? Nothing, nothing, nothing!) "I've not thought of anything but you. I want you for my very own. There is no one like you, my love, my Princess.

"You'll write to me. Even if you don't care a little bit you'll write. Dear, I hardly dare hope that you care, but I daren't fear that you don't. I shall count the minutes till I get your answer. I feel like a schoolboy.

"Dear it's my very heart I'm sending you here. If I didn't love you, love you, love you I could write a better letter, tell you better how I love you. Write now. You will write?

"Did someone tell you something or write you something that made you go away? It's not true, whatever it is. Nothing's true, but that I want you. As I've never wanted anything. Let me see you. Let me tell you. I'll explain everything—if anyone has been telling lies.

"If you don't care enough to write, I don't care enough to go on living. Oh, my dear Dear, all the words and phrases have been used up before. There's nothing new to say, I know. But what's in my heart for you—that's new, that's all that matters—that and what your heart might hold for me. Does it? Tell me. If I can't have your love, I can't bear my life. And I won't.—You'll think this letter isn't like me. It isn't, I know. But I can't help it. I am a new man: and you have made me. Dear,—can't you love the man you've made? Write, write, write!

"Yours—as I never thought I could be anyone's,

"Eustace Vernon."

"It's too long," he said, "most inartistic, but I won't re-write it. Contemptible ass! If she cares it won't matter. If she doesn't, it won't matter either."

And that was the letter that lay in the locked drawer for a week. And through that week the watching for the postman went on—went on. And the enquiries, mechanically.

And no answer came at all, to either of his letters. Had the Concierge deceived him? Had she really no address to which to send the letter?

"Are you sure that you posted the letter?"

"Altogether, monsieur," said the concierge, fingering the key of the drawer that held it.

And the hot ferment of Paris life seethed and fretted all around him. If Betty were at Long Barton—oh, the dewy gray grass in the warren—and the long shadows on the grass!